A SPARTAN and a Huragok Abroad: Sera Ahoy!
by Camolot the Creator
Summary: A Huragok and a SPARTAN-II, completely by accident, take the Covenant heavy corvette Ardent Prayer for a universe-hopping joyride. Perhaps some good can come of this? And what kind of idiot names their planet Sera? The first arc in what I hope to be a series of fics, all orbiting around Jorge-052, a huragok named Bobs Occasionally and the Ardent Prayer.
1. Chapter 1: Jumped

Where had everyone gone?

Typically, in normal Huragok fashion, Bobs Occasionally would not have even spared a thought no matter if the corridor it was floating through was empty or packed wall-to-wall. However, today was not a typical day.

Bobs Occasionally had spent some very happy time repairing the main dorsal doors of the _Ardent Prayer_ , which had somehow managed to seal themselves shut semi-permanently, and had been almost busy enough with the job to miss the fact that the ship seemed to have gone into slipspace. While this had been odd, Bobs Occasionally had assumed that the event had nothing to do with it unless something broke, and had successfully completed the repair of the doors. While it would have liked to continue forward and repair the numerous Starfighters that were parked on the upper deck of the corvette, it had no desire to face a vacuum, so it had gone to find someone to move the ships into the corvette's hangar.

Bobs Occasionally chirruped to itself softly as it moved down the worryingly empty corridor, looking into rooms it passed as it did so and searching for familiar faces. Most often, it would find Cyko 'Salkam in the weapons room, and the Sangheili had been one of the few crew members that had been quite happy to assist the Huragok whenever it had needed him. However, Cyko 'Salkam had not been there, and a half-disassembled plasma pistol had been left lying on the work bench.

Almost absent-mindedly, Bobs Occasionally had reassembled the weapon, recharging the pistol's internal batteries as it did so. Cyko 'Salkam had always been pleased when the Huragok had done that, as every recharged plasma pistol was one fewer replacement that the weaponsmaster Sangheili had to order from the Covenant's armories. Placing the now-whole weapon into a cradle specifically designed for it, the Huragok floated gently out of the room, determined to search for another who might be receptive to its queries.

Unfortunately, this was not a search that the universe planned to allow the poor Huragok to complete: Bobs Occasionally shrieked in distress as the _Ardent Prayer_ began to shake violently, the aimless slipspace jump beginning to fray and collapse at the edges. In a near-blind panic, the Huragok accessed the ship's systems, the huge amount of information routed from the sensor arrays through the ship's systems and straight into the organic AI's head -in a metaphorical sense, if not a literal one.

Realizing quite quickly that there would be no more repairing for it if the ship shook itself apart or ripped up in slipspace, the creature processed the sensor and damage data in a rapid-fire succession that would have made most UNSC AI blush with envy. Bobs Occasionally, desperate for anything that might keep the abused corvette together, threw its mind around for an answer that fit the problem: then, as if an invisible switch had been flipped, it went deathly calm.

Quite suddenly, the situation did not seem so desperate as it appeared to be: it knew exactly what to do, exactly which actions to take. A pre-programmed series of responses, burned into the genetic code of every Huragok the day it was created in a Forerunner lab, a process that the Forerunners themselves had long destroyed for fear the Flood, or even the Reclaimers, might find it. One of the greater secrets of that lost species, and Bobs Occasionally knew exactly how to enact it.

It spun up the corvette's own slipspace drive, and oscillated the signature until it matched that of the device in the hangar bay: the foreign drive was human in make, and created a hole into slipspace differently. Unlike most jumps, however, the drive had continued to run after the initial rip in space-time that had allowed the passage of the vessel into slipspace, causing destabilization within their local bubble. Normally, this would result in the complete atomization of the vessel and everything on board: however, by matching and boosting the signal of the first drive, the second prevented further bubble entropy and instead made it punch _through_ , instead of falling apart.

Bobs Occasionally assembled the correct series of actions that the ship and its devices must take to initiate the process, then created what amounted to a coded activation button. The huragok hesitated before pressing it, reconsidering it for just a moment: this was, if it had its math right, quite possibly the riskiest thing that anyone or anything in control of a slipspace drive had ever attempted to do, and the chance of complete failure was astronomical.

Then, the AI remembered, to its chagrin, that while the process MIGHT kill it, not initiating the protocol WOULD kill it. Hesitation gone, the Huragok pressed the button, and everything went white.


	2. Chapter 2: Intelligencia

Jorge did not know why he wasn't dead. He recalled the moments leading up to this very clearly: him throwing away his helmet, which now lay against the pelican with him. He had thrown Six through the barrier that prevented the hangar's atmosphere from venting into space. He had waited for Six to be well and truly clear of the vessel and its makeshift weapon, then had activated it. Then, he had not died.

"Noble five?"

The drive itself, mangled and stripped first by those that had crafted it into a weapon and then by those who had attempted to UNmake the weapon, hummed in its welded cradle. It had not atomized the ship, nor had it killed him, and now appeared to be doing the job it was designed for, rather than the job that it had been modified to do. This was not to say that that was necessarily problematic: whether it had destroyed everything within range, or merely sent it all crashing into slipspace, it had all-but destroyed the _Long Night of Solace_ , taking the larger ship's entire middle third with it. There was, of course, also the small bonus that Jorge quite _liked_ being alive. It meant that, providing he could find a way back, he could finish the fight for his beloved Reach.

"Noble five."

This, of course, led him back to the fact that, taking everything he had been told about slipspace accidents such as these, he really should be dead now. A part of him wondered vaguely whether there actually was an afterlife -SPARTANS had no time or sense for such nonsense- and, if there was, what would happen to him if he went there. Another part wondered about whether a soul could get lost in slipspace and never find its way out. A third part wondered if there was a way of possibly smacking the other two parts over the head, preferably with a heavy blunt object.

"Noble five!"

"Mit? DOT? That you?"

"Affirmative, Noble five."

The voice, seemingly impossibly, was emanating from the Pelican's comms systems.

"How?"

"Transfer of software copy from UNSC heavy frigate _Savannah_ just prior to detonation to local memory storage for Pelican dropship, Noble Five. This copy was assisting _Savannah_ with firing solutions for local fire support."

Jorge grunted. Really, in a way, he was quite glad to have some piece of Reach, even if it was a "dumb" AI. He sat there a moment longer, considering whether or not he actually wanted to move anywhere: if this was the afterlife, if he had saved Reach, then there had best be armor-clad waitresses bringing all the alcoholic beverages that he could ever dream of right here. Glancing around a moment, and sadly confirming that refreshing beverages were not forthcoming, he grabbed his helmet with his right hand and, bracing himself against the Pelican with his left, hauled all his one thousand pounds of armored supersoldier up onto his feet. He paused for a moment, staring down at his helmet as he shifted it from one hand to two hands, before neatly fitting it over his head and locking it in place. After all, if he truly lived, then there was only one thing for it:

Return to Reach. Finish the fight.

"Dot, can you access the ship's systems?"

"A moment."

There was a several second pause, which Jorge used as a chance to gather up his favored weapon Etilka, the familiar weight of the .50 caliber HMG soothing in his hands. He checked the box.

 _Hm._ He thought. _Half full._

Dot, her synthesized British voice coming in clear through the helmet comms, spoke up. "Apologies, Noble Five. I appear to be unable to access the corvette's systems without a hard link."

Jorge grimaced. _Never mind,_ he decided, _it's half empty._

Bobs Occasionally burbled to itself. In truth, it was quite pleased: it had executed the contingency flawlessly, had brought the near-abandoned ship through quite well and in one piece. It was confident that few other Covenant-born Huragok, if any, could have pulled off that particular stunt successfully, especially not the second slipspace jump mere moments after the first, which had landed them right back in normal space. Of course, the fact that there appeared to be all of one living being aboard as according to the ship's sensors- not counting Bobs Occasionally itself- was rather a note of worry for the creature.

The ships logs stated that there had been a wave of evacuations to the drop pods around the rim of the vessel, as well as to any escape pods, while the rest of the onboard forces had gone to the hangar bay either to kick the boarders off the ship, or at least slow them down and hold them back. It appeared that they had all been killed.

This did not particularly bother the Huragok, outside of some vague concern over the few that it had known personally. Really, as long as it was allowed to continue repairing the ship and anything else that happened to break, Bobs Occasionally did not particularly care who was in charge of the ship. Bobs Occasionally was, after all, a Huragok: The Covenant could worship the Huragok's creators all they wanted; it was just happy as long as they gave him equipment to repair and fine tune.

As the floating creature wandered the halls of the ship, allowing accumulated sensor data to guide it to damage caused by either the two jumps that the ship had made in quick succession or the extended firefight that had raged between the rooms. The occasional body of a UNSC Marine or one of the many species of Covenant did little to hamper its work, though it did occasionally patch their armor and weapons. Sure, it was not as if they were going to be using them any time soon, but Bobs Occasionally needed no more excuse to fix something than "that's broken", and sometimes not even that.

 _Really,_ the thought occurred to it, _I should be meeting with this newcomer. Surviving a firefight would mean that their armor and weapons may have taken damage themselves, and the firefight being in the main hangar bay may mean that the ships stored there might have taken rounds at some point._

Thoroughly enthused at the idea, Bobs Occasionally chirruped to itself. Yes, this was a _very_ good day.


	3. Chapter 3: Assessment

Jorge picked his way through the mass of bodies in the hangar, HMG in hand. He'd elected to leave DOT in the pelican's computer systems for the moment, which were relatively intact despite the beating that the vessel had received during the final firefight. Not that he'd had a choice in the matter, exactly- AI could only really be transferred from system to system by hardlink, compatible high-bandwidth softlink or crystal chip. Seeing as he had none of these, it was best to leave DOT where she was, though some part of him rankled at the idea of being forced to leave behind a familiar part of home, even if it was just for the few minutes needed to find a data port and a cable of some sort.

He had been searching some of the darker corners of the hangar, picking his way through supplies dumped out of the way in an attempt to locate something useful, when one of the doors into the hangar swept open. The Spartan reacted immediately and silently, drawing slightly further into the shadows, HMG at the ready and pointed towards the origin of the sound. He sat there, near invisible, and waited… there! Movement!

Jorge pointed the barrel of his weapon, lining up the creature in his HUD's reticles and half-pulling the trigger before he realized what it was. Pointed, triangular body, tentacles, the small head with six dark eyes… engineer. Noble had received some amount of briefing on these particular creatures- namely, they'd been told that the things were non-hostile, and that capturing them alive when encountered was extremely desirable, if it was an option. His finger still tensed around the trigger for a moment more before relaxing as logic prevailed. He might not like it, but this corvette was beat up from the fights it had been through, and he didn't exactly have the expertise needed to repair a Covenant vessel. This creature, on the other hand, did very much so.

He stepped out of the shadows, the engineer's head flicking to him immediately, and was surprised by the greeting trill that the creature made. It examined him up and down a moment before approaching, Jorge growing tenser and tenser the closer the thing came, until they were as face to face as they could be, the dark eyes of the alien staring into the polarized helmet visor. After a moment, its gaze dropped to the armour. Specifically, it went to a small hole where a needler round had managed to penetrate the Spartan's shield and damaged the armoured plating that covered the MJOLNIR suit. It made another, softer trill, then reached up a tentacle, Jorge going ridged in his effort not to just shoot the thing. To his surprise, it made no aggressive move, simply did… something to his armour. When he looked down, he realized that the hole was gone, though the material that was there was slightly miscoloured when compared to the surrounding plate. He looked up again, just in time to catch the thing nodding to him before drifting off towards the pelican, whistling and chirping in something that almost resembled a song. Jorge hesitated a moment, then lowered his HMG and followed, holding up a hand.

"Wait."

The engineer paused, looking back at him quizzically, the sounds it made matching its mannerism.

"Do you… Derʹmo, yak ya... um…" he rubbed the back of his helmet, then continued, "I need to hook that ship's-" he pointed to the pelican- "computer systems to that of the Corvette's. Can you, um, do that? Do you understand me?"

Another trill, the engineer seeming to consider for a moment before nodding, the Spartan sighing in relief and stepping back towards the center of the hangar, remaining on guard against further intrusions. The engineer, in the meantime, turned away from both him and the pelican and towards the piles of supplies that Jorge had been previously picking through. It seemed to consider for a moment, then select a few disparate cables and drag them over to a port on the exterior of the craft. Jorge, keeping one eye on the entrances into the hangar, still managed to watch with fascination as the tiny, thread-thin tentacles that came from the main ones moved lightning quick to disassemble the end of the cable, taking fiber optic filaments and matching them to the inputs and outputs of the pelican's plug. 

After a few minutes of deliberation, and a long series of faint whistles and chirps, the engineer made what seemed to be a triumphant noise before jacking the last of the cable, a thicker bundle of wires that Jorge vaguely recognized as a power conduit, into the plug. That complete, it made its way to one of the nearby jutting pieces of architecture that decorated the floor of the hanger, behind a couple of human weapons crates that had been dumped there. It pushed aside a battle rifle that had been left leaning there, tapping and opening a nearly undetectable panel in the shining purple material, which swung open to reveal a port that matched the plug at the end of the cable. The engineer inserted the plug, twisted it, and it flashed once before settling into a more gentle blue glow.

"Noble five," DOT's voice now came from the ship's speakers, "transfer of AI into host ship systems complete. Use of command level data conduit appears to have allowed me to circumvent Covenant cyber defenses and gain control of all ship's systems."

Jorge breathed a short sigh of relief, nodding his thanks to the engineer, which chirruped in happiness at simply being useful.

"Enemies?" He asked.

"None, Noble five. Any Covenant forces not evacuated attempted to storm the hangar and disable the slipspace device- there are only three life signs on board."

That gave Jorge pause for a moment. "Three?"

"IFF tags register third life form to be ODST Corporal Ian Arroyo, service tag R-one-five-K."

Jorge nodded. He would have preferred a Spartan, to be honest, but he was glad that there was at least one surviving human on board, whatever they were.

"Condition?"

"Corporal Ian Arroyo appears to have suffered minor to moderate plasma burns in the abdominal area as apparent result of plasma fire. Remote access to suit's systems pending… complete. Injuries are non-life-threatening, provided timely low-grade medical attention. Recovery time pending further examination."

Jorge nodded again, hefting his HMG for a moment, then deciding to- with much hesitation and unwillingness- leave it behind on the pelican, grabbing a med kit as he did. "Show me to him."

One of the doors along the walls of the hangar opened. The engineer didn't even glance up at the noise, appearing to be working on simultaneously splicing the slipspace device in the back of the pelican into the ship's system through the pelican itself and repairing the damaged thrusters on one side. Jorge jogged through the door and into the hallway behind it.

The carnage was lessened here, away from the main battle in the hangar, but there were burns consistent with plasma weaponry, bullet holes and the occasional body, whether human or Covenant. Jorge ignored them all beyond a cursory glance or the occasional swift movement necessary to avoid a body or a piece of wreckage in his way.

"Status report. What condition are we in?" 

"Covenant SDV-class heavy corvette Ardent Prayer functioning at near full capacity. Engines optimal, reactor optimal, flight control optimal. Compliment twelve type-twenty-seven EMF, codename Banshee, five type thirty-one XMF, codename Seraph, six type fifty-two TC, codename Phantom. Six YSS-1000 Sabre class fighters, varying degrees of functionality. One D-seven-seven-H TC pelican, minor armour and thruster damage. Jorge zero-five-two, Noble five, green condition. Corporal Ian Arroyo, second company ODST, yellow condition."

Jorge grunted in appreciation. "Thorough."

"I aim to please, Noble five. Left at the next juncture." 

A number of directions from DOT, corrected once or twice for a jammed door or a barricaded corridor, led him finally to a final hallway. Human defenders lay across barricades that had protected them, plasma having scorched and melted the things they had used to form it, and even parts of them. It seemed to Jorge at first glance that nothing could have survived this bloodbath, but DOT's assurances and the faint breathing his suit's auditory sensors picked up, not to mention the active IFF tag, led him through the carnage… and right into the sights of a magnum.

The ODST trooper was pointing it at him, having heard the movement, but his hand was shaking and the other was pressed to his gut where he'd been struck by a bolt of plasma. Jorge paused for a moment, holding up his hands.

"Calm down, trooper. Friendlies."

The ODST hesitated, then lowered the weapon and relaxed a little, sighing in relief.

"I'm glad to see you, sir… was worried I was the only one left. Felt the shudder- the device went off, right?" Jorge nodded. "Good… surprised to not be dead, though." 

"You and me both. If you will…?" Jorge gestured to the trooper's midsection.

"Ah… 'course. Thanks." He removed the hand, revealing his wound to Jorge, who hissed faintly in sympathy at the sight of it.

The wound was not excessively deep- there was some second degree burning across his abdomen, and it was obvious that it hurt like hell, but the trooper's armour had done its job. While the ablative plating had boiled away, it had taken the majority of the round, killing most of the energy dead before it had reached the human inside the armour. Thus, the man had narrowly avoided being killed, in favor of some wounding that would take perhaps a few weeks to heal. All in all, he'd been lucky- incredibly so, thought Jorge, glancing around with a note of sorrow at the trooper's fellows. Using the extent of what training he had, Jorge began methodically treating the wound- application of bio-foam, an adhesive dressing, then a short shot of painkiller- just enough to stop the pain, and not enough to dull the trooper's mind. Having done as much as he could, Jorge sealed the med kit back up, sticking it onto his lower back and offer his hand to the trooper. The ODST took it, coming unsteadily to his feet, Jorge easily taking his weight.

"Is there an infirmary nearby?"

"Processing." There was a pause, then, "affirmative. Follow the lights, please."

A number of lights began pulsing. Jorge nodded his thanks to the AI, then followed the shimmering lights down another couple corridors.

The infirmary was about what he had expected- not designed necessarily with humans in mind, but some of the basic equipment was similar enough to their human equivalents that Jorge thought it didn't matter too much. He lay the injured trooper on one of the beds, waving away another bout of thanks from him.

"We're pretty much all that's left- the only other things on this ship are DOT and an engineer, neither of which are likely to even attempt to harm us, so you should be fine here. If you need anything, tell DOT, alright?" 

The trooper nodded absently, head drooping a bit as the painkiller and exhaustion took effect. Jorge stayed for a few minutes, pawing through the medical equipment there, before leaving and heading back towards the hangar.

"What is our current location?"

"Orbiting unknown planet. No known star chart matches current stellar arrangement, planet does not match any in database. Ship's sensors indicate planet was inhabited by tier four civilization, evidenced by pollutants in atmosphere and satellites in orbit- however, lack of radio communications indicate possible civilization breakdown and potential extinction of species. Recommend scouting planet for usable resources and facilities, as well as supplies. Current medical and food supplies incompatible with human physiology."

Jorge quieted at that. He understood needing supplies, and he had no qualms about looting a dead planet for them, but not knowing where they were… he shook his head. Focus, Jorge. He jogged through the last set of doors and into the hangar, approaching the forcefield and looking down on the planet. A shocking visage of patched land, with huge craters and blackened sections interrupting blocks of green, and a blue sea greeted his vision.

"From records retrieved from remaining operational satellites in orbit, planet is named… Sera."


	4. Chapter 4: Uplink

Jorge's hands clenched. He could almost see Reach's likeness in this husk of a planet- hell, it even looked to have been glassed. Battered and bruised, an abused ball of rock that had once played host to the hopes of millions, if not billions, who now lay dead. Of this last fact, Jorge had no doubt: he could see the scars from orbit, his helmet's optics zooming in here or there to give him a fantastic look at deep craters or black-edged harbors where he was sure that cities had once been.

"Information gathered from remaining data network indicates a population in the billions. Native Serans seem to be analogous to humanity, but there is no apparent link to the UNSC or mention of any civilization beyond the confines of their planet."

Surprise flickered across his face at that. "Analogous?"

"Indeed, Noble five. Records not corrupted beyond repair indicate that natives where indistinguishable from humans in every respect."

Jorge hummed in thought. A lost colony, or perhaps one that had broken ties with the UNSC? No, he would have heard about it, and there would be some mention of such an event. It seemed too unlikely for humans to have somehow simultaneously developed on two different planets, especially considering the time frame meant that they should be farther along than they were… and they were merely tier four, not a tier three like Earth and her colonies.

"Recovered records indicate that there are a number of surviving cities that remained mostly intact during the aftermath of something that is referred to as the 'Locust War'. Details on the event itself are locked behind multiple military-grade firewalls that I am unable to breach without a hard connection. Apologies, Noble five."

Jorge waved a hand dismissively. "Think nothing of it, DOT. You were not built for offensive cyber warfare." He considered for a moment. "Is there any way to get a hardline connection?"

"Affirmative. There are intact military facilities that are still powered by long-term reactor complexes, and access to the computer systems of any one of them would allow me to gain keys to all them. Recommend taking Phantom dropship down to surface and selecting a military base. Once there, access to systems and resources will allow for a stock of armaments, ammunition and supplies to be built, and would form a defensible staging point for expeditions into nearby cities for further supplies if need be."

He nodded. Sound enough, he supposed- he couldn't find any particular problems with it. And really, he was a Spartan- anything threatening in those ruins, he could put down with ease.

"From what I have been capable of gathering, there are a few choices- however, the base in particular with the highest chance of having avoided damage is one in a place called Halvo Bay, known as Onyx Point. It was abandoned early on in the battle for the city, and it appears that all forces were drawn away from the installation in the wake of a short battle that occurred there. Once you are in a Phantom, I am capable of guiding you down to the surface and to the base itself- from there, you will be on your own."

No surprises there. Noble had practically been on their own, save for a few bits of support from random marines or some equipment drops, since they had first found the Covenant on Reach. Jorge turned his back to the view of the planet, checking over his equipment as he made his way towards the boarding area for the compliment of Phantoms that the Corvette carried. One was dispatched from where they were held in the bowels of the ship, unlocking and hovering to the center of the hangar, lining up with one of the catwalks that were on either side of the hangar itself. Jorge made a quick detour to grab his beloved Etilka then climbed in through the turret entrance and up to the cockpit, the engineer following him in and securing itself in the back of the vessel. He glanced over at it, deliberating, then decided that it would come in handy on the surface. Settling into the chair there and examining the unfamiliar controls for a moment before DOT uploaded a primer for them into his suit's systems. After a quick reading, he grasped the controls, the dropship pulling away from the cockpit and moving towards the field on the opposite side from the pelican.

"DOT, keep tabs on the ODST in medical. I don't want to lose him to anything."

"Affirmative, Noble five. Good hunting."

"Dyakuyu."

With that, the Spartan eased the ship through the forcefield and out into the vacuum of space, the thing sealing itself as it did. Not that he had needed it to, exactly, as his suit was perfectly capable of functioning in the extreme environment of hard space, but he understood that some of the ship's systems functioned better with an internal atmosphere, and there wasn't exactly a high risk of explosive decompression by way of weapon's fire.

Through a connection to his suit's comms systems, DOT guided him down to the blackened surface of the ruined world. As he approached the planet, sliding into its atmosphere, he noted that some of the burns really did resemble those inflicted upon a world by the plasma weaponry of the Covenant. Straight lines that glittered where the very soil and surface itself had melted into glass by the high heat of weapons strikes were drawn across great swaths of the continents, huge impact craters where focused fire had created a gigantic bowl of melted silicates. This is what Reach would look like if they failed.

Jorge shook off these thoughts as the craft passed through the upper atmosphere and made its way down towards a ruined city lying in the shadows of a mountain range, or, more specifically, to an island offshore of the fields of buildings, like tombstones of the world forgotten and lost. The engineer chirruped in the back as they pulled into a clear landing area meant for some sort of craft, accessing the Phantom's systems and using its sensor arrays to scan the base itself at a higher resolution than the Ardent Prayer could manage from orbit.

The Spartan shut down the engines, extracting himself from the pilot's seat and unsealing the vessel, readying his HMG from where it had lain, secured for the flight, then jumped down to the soil. The engineer followed behind, chittering nervously to itself before activating some sort of shielding. To Jorge's minor surprise, the shielding applied itself to him as well, acting as a second layer of shield over his MJOLNIR's already present one.

"Ship's sensors read no hostiles in immediate area, Phantom's sensor suite confirms. Detecting life signs and movement within the city itself, however: recommend investigating after completion of current task."

"Affirmative. Will do."

Hefting his chain gun, Jorge made his way to the doors that led from the landing pad and deeper into the base itself. After a moment of looking over the door, he found and pulled a manual override, which made the doors spring open. Flicking on his headlamps after a glance at the darkened interior of the hallway that greeted him, sparing a glance to make sure that the engineer was still with him, Jorge made his way inside machine gun barrel first.

Dust drifted and swirled in his wake, his clanging steps echoing in the oppressive silence of the abandoned base. Lights blinked dimly in the darkness, but it wasn't enough to illuminate even this confined space, and the Spartan's night vision was working overtime to make his surroundings visible. However, even despite that, it was difficult to miss the detritus of a battle that had occurred here- shell casings littered the floor, weapons lay discarded here and there covered in a mound of dust so thick that it was almost impossible to tell what they were, the occasional body moldered to nothing more than bones and armour. Shifting Etilka to a one-handed grip, the Spartan crouched and brushed the dust off of one of the weapons, an assault rifle with a large box magazine and what looked to be a chainsaw for a bayonet. Jorge blinked at the oddness of the weapon's design, then picked it up, clipping it to the magnetic holders on the back of his armour. He'd have a closer look at the odd thing later, most likely when the engineer was working on the computer: for now, he hefted Etilka back into a two-handed grip and made his way down the hall.

"Noble five, sensor scans have managed to build a basic map of the facility and have detected a mass of energy usage that may be a mainframe of some manner."

The Spartan paused at a T juncture in the hallway, where a number of arrow signs pointed down the two directions. One of them read MAINFRAME ACCESS, pointing to the right. He grunted in satisfaction- convenient, that.

"I've got it, DOT. Signs, in UNSC common no less."

"Indeed, Noble five. This is consistent with records. Very odd."

DOT couldn't sound disquieted, but Jorge most definitely could, and did. The strange things were piling up and up. First humans on some unknown world in the middle of galactic nowhere, then a UNSC language being the main language of this particular country? Disturbing, at the very least. The engineer seemed not to care in the least, however, making its way through the corridor behind him and tracing the wiring and piping in the walls, making noises to itself in the way that a human might mutter. Jorge found it almost strangely comforting, to see such a human quirk, even in such an alien body.

Activating the manual override on another set of doors led him into what appeared to be a mess. The infrared lamps of his helmet's night vision systems flickered and flashed across motes floating in the air as he turned his head in a slow circle, taking in the barricades formed from tables and various pieces of kitchen equipment and saturated with bullet holes, the sets of armour filled with bones, and the black stains, splotches and pools that covered the floor, the walls, the barricade… everything. The engineer made its way into the room, aimlessly pawing its way through armour and weapons, fixing the occasional object in a way that could almost be called nervous. Jorge stared at the pile of detritus for a moment longer before shaking himself and locating the next sign, exiting out a set of double doors and into another hallway.

Eventually, the silence and dead air gave way to a security checkpoint with a single functioning fluorescent light, flickering gently on its own in a small concrete booth next to a security door. Unfortunately, this door seemed to have been sealed tight, and there appeared to be no manual override- at least, not that Jorge could see. He hissed out a breath, considering either backtracking and trying to find a way around or finding some explosives and blowing the door, but stopped when the engineer made its way to the door. It tapped the doors themselves with a tentacle, then floated over to a panel just to the side of it, popping it off of the wall and setting to work on the wires within. Jorge watched in slight surprise for a moment before deciding that it had been a good idea to bring the creature along, before turning to watch down the hallway in case DOT hadn't been correct about the island being abandoned.

After a few moments of soft chittering and whistling, the engineer rang out with a victorious cry as the panel flashed green and the door hissed open. Jorge nodded his thanks to the creature as he stepped past it and into the room beyond, the engineer following him in and pausing to seal the door again behind them.

Banks of computers met the Spartan's vision, flickering and flashing and humming in the low light, black matte surfaces absorbing the infrared of his headlamps as he made a quick scan of the room for hostiles. After a moment, he located a computer terminal and, with a few gestures, managed to attract the attention of the engineer and indicate the terminal, hoping that was enough to get across what he wanted. The creature tilted its head, black eyes shining, then nodded and floated over, tentacles splitting into smaller ones that flickered lightning fast across the keyboard. Jorge watched, astonished, as screens and windows flickered past faster than the eye could see as the creature challenged the security of the entire mainframe with ease. After only a minute or two, the engineer floated back with a preening churr, the terminal wide open for access. Jorge nodded his thanks, stepping up and looking down at the screen.

Again, he felt a spark of confusion and slight paranoia at the sight of even more UNSC common, scrolling down and across the screen. Strange didn't come close to describing this. After a moment, he shook off the feeling. He had a job to do. Accessing the search protocols, he located the interface for a satellite uplink array for the base, which registered as mostly intact due to the fact that the satellite dish appeared to be underground by what schematics he could find. Apparently, the thing was a backup, the main dish having long been shot to pieces or rusted into oblivion, and this backup dish was meant to stay sheltered, underground in its little bay and quite safe, until the heat on the base had cooled enough for communications to go back online. He hit the activation button for the array, watched as it processed… then made a grunt of frustration as it appeared to encounter a mechanical error, a soft alarm chirping away in the darkness. He navigated the menus again, locating the access program for the base's security cameras, then poked through listings of cameras until he found a functional one that was pointed more or less towards where the backup array.

To his frustration, the satellite was above the ground, but appeared to not be fully folded out. As he watched, the entire thing twitched and shook, then stopped again. Apparently, something had rusted, broken or had become not properly lubricated since the base had shut down, and now the thing refused to do its job. He sighed.

Well, Jorge thought, if a good kick doesn't fix it, I'm sure the engineer can do something about it.

With this thought in mind, he picked up Etilka again from where he had lain the HMG against the console, motioning for the engineer to follow as he stepped back through the security doors and into the maze of hallways that made up this facility. Thankfully, in the time that he had taken getting to the room and accessing the mainframe with the engineer's help, DOT had been using regular sensor sweeps to build a more and more comprehensive map of the facility, and he had no trouble what so ever finding his way to a rusted freight elevator. He mashed the up button, noting the engineer settling on the steel grating as the elevator began making its way upwards. Jorge supposed that it was most likely easier for the elevator to lift the engineer than have to constantly adjust its lift to keep up with the rising floor.

A while of grinding gears and shifting cables passed as doors came and went, before the car stopped, shuddering, at the final set of doors, which slid open to reveal the interior of what appeared to be a repair and maintenance shed, with a sliding door set in the opposite wall. Jorge crossed the inside of the shed, avoiding bundles of cable and piles of parts strewn about the inside, gripping the handle of the door and pulling it to the side.

Immediately he was met with the shrieking of metal against metal as the jammed satellite made another valiant effort to come up, only to fail and cease for fear of damaging itself. The engineer made to move up to the array, tentacles already extended in order to diagnose and fix the mechanical issue that had caused this, but Jorge waved the creature away. Stomping up to the thing, he reared back and kicked it hard with his armoured boot, causing a loud bang to reverberate among the stone and concrete scattered around the short peak. He waited a moment, then kicked it a second time, then a third. Just as he was rearing back for a fourth, the satellite unlocked and extended upwards fully, pointed at the sky.

"Signal received. Sorting access keys. Mainframe access established."

Jorge nodded in satisfaction, putting both hands back on his machine gun and making his way back towards the elevator, engineer in tow. One thing down, who knows how many to go.


	5. Chapter 5: Rendezvous

Jorge grunted as he used a girder to lever a pile of debris into the air, clearing a small triangular hole.

It had been a couple of days since he had first landed and connected DOT with the mainframe of Onyx Point- which had turned out to be one of three secondary mainframes, with a primary mainframe deeper in the base where the residents had apparently kept the more sensitive information. This wouldn't be a problem, if it weren't for the fact that DOT needed access to all three secondary mainframes in order to open the causeway to the primary. This was not to mention that, during the attack, some soldiers had shut down the main elevator for the entire base, meaning that both the armory and the mainframe were somewhere that they couldn't go.

So, here he was, a Spartan, the end product of several of humanity's greatest projects, and he was relegated to repair duty.

Ian shimmied into the gap, headlamps on, searching for the break in the cables that isolated the third secondary mainframe from the other two. The ODST had healed enough to be able to do some basic repairwork, thanks to DOT fiddling with the Ardent Prayer's medbay until she had figured out how to make medigel with the equipment. He wasn't fully healed, as he had to keep reapplying the medigel to his extremities and abdomen where plasma had burned through his armour, but at least his ODST suit was now fully repaired thanks to the efforts of the engineer.

Jorge turned his head slightly to glance at the creature in question through his polarized visor. The engineer was hovering to the side, watching the goings-on with mild interest, as far as Jorge could tell. The alien didn't exactly have much in the way of facial expressions, or, indeed, much of a face. It had worked tirelessly to repair the base's systems enough for deeper access, seeming not to sleep, and it was a large part of the reason that they had made so much progress on their work. Jorge no longer pulled the magnum clipped to his thigh whenever he saw it, which, in terms of his relationship with aliens, meant that he was practically fond of it.

However, the engineer couldn't lift the heavier objects, and struggled with smaller spaces. Thus, Jorge handled heavy lifting while Ian, who had been the technician for his squad and being the smallest of their motley group, forced himself into tiny cracks and crevices to assess the damage. Many pieces and parcels of damage he'd been perfectly able to repair on his own, which had saved them quite a bit of time clearing random bits of collapsed tunnel or steel. Hopefully, this would be one of those, as Jorge was getting a little anxious about staying in this empty tomb of a base much longer.

"I see it!" Ian's voice came through Jorge's helmet's speakers.

"Vidminno. What's wrong with it? Good news, or bad?"

"One moment…" there were a few quiet shuffling noises as the ODST wiggled deeper into the rubble. "Oh, yeah, there it is- four connection cables. Looks like a steel beam fell on them, cut them clean through."

Jorge sighed. Another few hours of clearing rubble so that the engineer could get in and repair them. However, his thoughts were interrupted as Ian spoke again.

"Wait… oh, clever- they're not severed, they have quick releases. When the beam hit, it triggered the quick releases and caused the cables to separate. They just have to be fit back together again. Just a second…"

There were some more sounds of rummaging.

"There we go- I think I got it! Try it now."

"Affirmative, Corporal. Please wait… access successful. Secondary mainframe three online and functional."

Jorge waited for the ODST to extract himself from the rubble pile, standing and brushing away the gray dust that clung to his armour, before slowly lowering the beam back into place, ensuring that none of the rubble slipped back and cut the cables again. Truthfully, he was relieved that at least this portion of the manual labor was over with, and then next he didn't mind so much. Specifically, stripping the armory of this base as bare as possible, filling the Phantom with as many weapons and as much ammo as it could carry, then dropping off that load in the Ardent Prayer's storage before coming back for more until the armory was empty. Yes, he was looking forwards to that.

"Main elevator unlocked." There was a pause. "Noble five, Phantom sensors are detecting unusual activity at the edge of the city. A vehicle is approaching at high speed, registering three lifeforms aboard, humanoid."

Jorge hummed to himself. "Can you give me any more information about them?"

"Negative, Noble five. Apologies: sensor resolution too low at this range for proper scanning."

The Spartan waved a hand. "Don't worry about it. I'll take the Banshee out, see what's happening, maybe rub shoulders with the locals. Find out where they got UNSC common from."

The ODST seemed concerned, though his face was invisible behind his polarized visor, taking an assault rifle from where he'd left it on the floor next to the pile of rubble. The grey surface of the rifle was interrupted by a number of scratch marks, three of them, with a crude sketch of an Elite's helmet above them.

"Are you certain you want to go alone, sir? I could come along if-"

Jorge held up a hand to cut him off, shaking his head.

"Banshee only fits one and taking the Phantom would be as good as announcing our presence to every potential hostile in the area. Besides," Jorge pointed to the patch in the trooper's armour, "you're not exactly combat ready yet."

Ian grumbled, but took the point, clipping the assault rifle to his back. The big Spartan patted the ODST on the shoulder, walking past him and towards the doors. Before he could leave, the ODST seemed to think of something.

"Hey!" Jorge halted and turned his head slightly, the gold of his visor flashing in the low light. The ODST shifted in place, then continued. "Don't die, alright? I don't want to be the only human within a million lightyears, yeah?"

Jorge huffed the smallest amused laugh.

"Don't worry about me." He turned back to the door, Etilka at his side.

"Spartans never die."

The Banshee swept quietly through the skies, engine producing a low wooshing hum not dissimilar to a vacuum. Jorge was thankful that this particular Covenant fighter was adapted to both the atmosphere of a planet and the hard vacuum of space. They were much more fuel efficient than the Phantoms, and they only had so much helium 3 before they ran low and DOT had to leave orbit to refuel at one of the system's gas giants. Losing his primary source of orbital support made Jorge… anxious.

He kept low over the water on his approach, wingtips and the bottom of the vehicle nearly brushing the waves as he flew, seeking to hopefully avoid the notice of anything in the city itself that wasn't exactly friendly. Thankfully, lick seemed to be on his side today, as nothing and no one shot at him as he passed into the city itself, adjusting his altitude to fly just above the buildings.

As he banked to the side to avoid a particularly tall structure, still standing despite the slight lean that it had acquired, Jorge found himself wondering about the people they'd detected. The war that had been fought on this planet had devastated it, and DOT had estimated that close to ninety percent had been destroyed in some sort of orbital strikes. What sort of person survived that? Worse, what sort of person ordered that? Who could have been so desperate as to think that their only option was to bombard a planet almost entirely to glass? The Covenant did so, of course, and with alarming regularity, but they did it out of cruelty. Cruelty was easy to understand, desperation not so.

Jorge pushed aside his musings as a small plume of dust appeared on the cockpit monitors. He slowed the Banshee and came in for a closer look, staying at what he thought was a reasonable distance, far enough that whoever it was shouldn't be able to see him. He cursed not having a human vehicle, as the shining purple of the Banshee stood out like a bonfire on a tundra, and vowed to have each and every Covenant ship repainted with grey camouflage. At least then they'd stand out a little less.

"purpur, ya nenavydzhu kryvavyy purpur…" he muttered to himself.

The Spartan sighted the source of the plume of dust as soon as he had cleared the last row of buildings. A truck, beat up and worn, was making its way down a greatly aged and desiccated section of asphalt road. It bounced every time it encountered a crack, flying into the air a little before coming down on its suspension so hard that Jorge winced every time it did. It was a wonder that the vehicle hadn't shaken itself to pieces yet, if this was how it was being treated.

Zooming in with the optical controls, Jorge could vaguely make out the people in the truck itself- three, driver, passenger and one more in the back seat. The armour they wore, silver and greyish blue, flashed dully in the dim light, and parts glowed with a soft, blue light of their own. He was shocked to see that they weren't some nondescript humanoid aliens: they were, as far as he could tell from here, humans. The one in the driver's seat, blonde hair covered slightly with a pair of goggles, looked annoyed and angry, while the one in the passenger's seat, a large man less from fat and more from pure muscle, seemed almost excited. The third figure was impossible to read, thanks to the helmet he wore, whose eyes glowed the same soft blue as parts of his armour and the weapon that he held in both hands. A Lancer, Mark two, DOT had relayed from the records. Apparently, their enemy, the Locust, had incredibly tough hides, which had necessitated the design and manufacture of a weapon with one of the most bewildering attachments that Jorge had ever encountered: a chainsaw bayonet. He could see the teeth beneath the handguard of the weapon from here, big, vicious curved things designed to tear and rend flesh and metal alike.

While the Spartan was relatively certain that his armour would stand up to the weapon, he wasn't exactly in a rush to find out.

He swung the light and nimble fighter craft around in a sweeping arc, coming up in the blindspot of the vehicle and staying there, seeking to observe what he could. There was a small collection of weapons and boxes in the back of it that appeared to be divided between fuel canisters of some kind and crates of ammunition. Jorge was surprised to note that the difference was easy to spot even from this far, as the ammunition crates had large, glowing gears stamped on them. Vaguely, he wondered whether this was some sort of LED lighting that had been incorporated into the design, or if some brilliant mind had decided that every ammunition crate should contain a healthy amount of promethium. He wasn't sure which was worse.

Eventually, the truck rattled to a halt, pulling off to one side of the road. Jorge angled the fighter down, landing behind a stone outcropping that easily hid the Banshee, then popped the cockpit. His armoured boots made two small puff of dust as he settled his weight onto solid ground, sweeping around to the side of the craft and retrieving Etilka from where he'd strapped the weapon to the side of the fighter. While they hadn't had access to the deeper, main armoury, there was plenty of weapons and ammunition salvage above ground. Some of the defense emplacement's turrets, to Jorge's utter astonishment, used rounds that were functionally identical to the 12.99x99mm rounds that his HMG fired, and he had salvaged several boxes of ammunition from them, totaling near a thousand rounds. His armour allowed him to easily carry the lot.

Crouching low, he made his way to the top of the outcropping before sliding down the opposite side, shield sparking slightly from the movement. Sweeping from rock to rock, far quieter than one would expect seven feet and thousands of pounds of supersoldier to be, he made his way to a rocky lip that gave him safe cover from the road and put him close enough for his suit's audio receptors to pick up their conversation.

The blonde soldier, as Jorge assumed they were soldiers, was looking towards the city with a measure of disdain. He watched as the figure picked up a rock and belted it in the direction of the city itself.

"Hate this stupid city." He intoned, obvious annoyance and frustration ringing through his voice.

"What's his problem?" the helmeted soldier asked, gesturing to the blonde one with the butt of his assault rifle. Not for the first time, Jorge noted that the thing didn't really have a stock so much as a square bit of steel jutting from the back of the weapon.

"Long story." The larger man replied.

"Only COG soldiers are this noisy."

Jorge ducked his head back down behind the safety of the rock at the new voice, then inched back up to peer over. A new figure had appeared. His armour and weaponry were similar, if not identical to, the armaments of the three already present. However, he had a short pistol trained on them, and they had similarly trained their weapons on him. Jorge took the moment of intense focus on both sides to examine the newcomer in greater detail.

His hair was white, though from age or simply by quirk of genetics Jorge couldn't tell. A scar ran down the side of his face and under the neck of his armour, disappearing and quite likely going farther than Jorge could see. His armour, though similar to that of the others in the group, lacked the obvious gear motifs that the other three shared, instead replacing them with plain circles on his chest covered in slightly tilted yellow bars. Perhaps he was from a different faction? Jorge wondered if he was about to witness a shootout.

However, one of the soldiers, namely the blond one, seemed to recognize the white-haired one. He stepped forward, obvious surprise in his voice and written on his expression.

"Paduk?"

Jorge blinked. The name was incredibly similar to names from his home Reach, and he wondered if there were other things than UNSC common that this strange, nonsensical place shared with where he had come from. The blonde one made to step closer, his weapon remaining undrawn, but the larger man held him back, and the helmeted one still had his weapon trained on 'Paduk'. Paduk, similarly, had kept the pistol pointed at them, which the larger man of the four regarded with wary eyes.

"That sidearm can go back where you found it."

To Jorge's surprise, Paduk seemed to consider for one split second, before raising the weapon and uncocking the hammer, sliding it into a holster at his belt. The larger man seemed to accept this, lowering his arm and allowing the blonde one to stride forward, meeting Paduk in the center. They regarded each other for a moment, then shook hands, blonde clapping Paduk on his shoulder before speaking.

"We need help. And a boat."

Help? Help with what? Did these two belong to factions that were neutral with each other, but were at war with another over resources? Had this group been sent to negotiate with this Paduk? Unlikely, Jorge thought. The blonde soldier's reaction to seeing Paduk here had been surprise, and he obviously hadn't expected to meet anyone here, let alone someone that he had previously known. Stranger and stranger. Paduk nodded to them.

"Then come with me."

With that, he turned away and began walking down the road. Blonde turned and pointed at his companions as he followed behind, a small grin pulling up the ends of his mouth, though the large man seemed to have his doubts about this. Jorge watched until they'd reached a wooden bridge across a narrow chasm before hefting Etilka and following behind, leaping down from the outcropping and using the truck as cover. One of the four, the helmet, glanced back and Jorge froze, calmly watching for any indication that he'd been found out. After a few seconds, however, the helmeted figure shook his head and turned back to his companions, making his way out onto the bridge.

"Welcome to beautiful Halvo Bay!" The larger man said, surprising enthusiasm in his voice, especially considering what it was regarding.

"This city's been deserted for years." Paduk said. "Which is how we like it."

Blonde glanced back. "Whose 'we', exactly?"

"Come on. I'll show you."

More credence to the theory that Blonde and his companions had no idea that there was anyone even in the city. But why had they chosen here, specifically? Familiarity, perhaps? The helmeted figure seemed not to recognize it, but both Blonde and the large man had apparently been here before, though their responses to the city itself were on opposite ends of the emotional spectrum.

The four passed beyond the end of the bridge and onto a stairwell there, and Jorge cautiously made his way forwards. While he'd like to reveal himself and perhaps ask some questions, rather than this listening and spying junk, he was wary of revealing his presence to an as-of-yet unknown presence. The bridge creaked dangerously under his weight, part of it coming off and falling into the abyss below, but he made it across, crouching behind a small sign as he watched the figures round a group of burnt-out vehicles. He moved up again only when they were out of sight, making their way down the hill. One of them, Blonde, paused and looked out over the city and towards the oil rig beached in the center.

"How did THAT get there?" he asked.

Paduk spared a glance for the mass of steel.

"Tidal wave, after you sank Jacinto. The wave was twenty stories high. Carried it in from offshore."

Now that was interesting. Sank Jacinto? And what had Jacinto been, exactly? Few things could make a tidal wave that large… and Paduk had addressed it to Blonde personally, not an abstract. 'You', not 'they', and not a simple 'after Jacinto sank'. No, he'd chosen to address that comment personally to Blonde, as if Blonde had either been responsible for, or shared responsibility for, Jacinto's sinking.

"That's where we're headed." Paduk continued.

"That your place?"

"For the moment, yeah."

The four had rounded a bend in the street, and Jorge followed again, ducking behind cars and keeping his armour's bulk as hidden as he could.

"Something's ahead…" Paduk's voice came out in a low growl. There was a faint skittering noise, discarded rubbish being disturbed from where it had lain, and the four readied their weapons.

"GROUNDWALKERS!" A voice, rough and far too low to be human, shouted from ahead and down the road.

"Grubs. We'll get 'em." The hatred in Helmet's voice was obvious.

From what DOT had managed to pull from the archives, Grubs composed a majority of the enemy of the COG's forces, forming the shock troops of the Locust. Scaly, reptilian, ugly and just about as alien as any one of the Covenant. Jorge caught a glimpse of one going into cover before a series of shots rang out. Jorge watched as the four soldiers took cover, one circling up some stairs and onto a raised area to one side, dodging a hail of bullets as he did. Jorge debated his actions for a brief moment, then charged forward, Etilka at the ready.

The first Grub he saw was shredded in an instant by the concentrated fire of his beloved weapon, the rounds tearing easily through the thick hide of the creature and blowing large chunks out of him. A few rounds pinged off of his shield and he turned his weapon towards the offending Grub, causing it to duck behind cover as he rattled off a few rounds in its direction. The four stared at him a moment, apparently surprised, before shaking it off and using Jorge's covering fire to move up and towards the enemy. The one who'd taken the flank, Blonde, popped around a pillar and fired into the side of the cover the enemy was hiding behind. The momentary confusion as they all scuttled back to find better, safer cover allowed the other three and Jorge to pick off a few more before they went to ground again.

However, this proved to be a mistake, as the place they had chosen to take cover in was a small space defined by a twin pair of K rails and enclosed, causing them to bunch up. Paduk threw an oddly-designed grenade, a spike ball on a chain, into the group of Grubs, the explosion killing them before any of them could realize their mistake and seek out better cover. The danger apparently passed, Blonde cocked his head at Jorge and opened his mouth to say something, only to be interrupted by the loud sound of an alert horn.

"Ah… the locals know we're here," the large man said.

"Not exactly stealthy, are you?" Paduk replied, sarcasm lacing his voice.

Jorge turned the corner with the other four, laying eyes on a large gate. As he watched, the thing was winched up, letting out a number of Grubs and two far larger things, the size of full-grown Brutes and wielding large weapons.

"Diggers!" Helmet cried, and the four scattered, leaving Jorge to move forward on his own. He watched as both of them pointed their weapons to the ground, pulling the triggers and firing their rounds through the asphalt, where they seemed to dig through the ground, leaving a spiderweb of cracks in their wake as they rapidly approached Jorge's position. He watched and waited for a moment, then dove to the left and rolled, glancing behind him to see both rounds pop out of the ground and explode at waist height.

 _An interesting and brutally effective weapon,_ he thought. _I'll have to get one for myself._

He turned his attention back to the enemy, noting the four concentrating their fire on the larger ones and only taking out the smaller Grubs when an opportunity presented itself. He joined them, turning his HMG on the first of the 'diggers' and pulling the trigger, sending round after round crashing into the large figure. The thing's armour and hide held out under the concentrated fire from all five of them for a moment, then it shuddered and stumbled back before collapsing to the ground, blood pooling beneath it as it died. The second saw this and turned to retreat, but the five's focus fire cut it down before it could make it very far.

Rifles at the ready, the five of them made their way forward, Blonde poking at the body of one of the diggers and letting out an impressed whistle. Before any of them could question Jorge, however, the horn rang out again. They all looked up towards the roof of the building where the horn was just visible over the lip, then collectively ducked as explosives detonated down the ridge.

"What the-" Blonde's eyes widened. "Oh shit! Avalanche! Run!"

"To the service station at the bottom!" Paduk yelled.

The four of them dashed forward, gear clanking, making a run for the square of yellow light at the bottom of the hill. Jorge spared a glance at the coming rockslide before joining them, easily pulling to the center of the group and keeping pace as rocks rained down around them. The larger Spartan did what he could to protect the other four, his shield flickering and flashing as it deflected rocks and rubble away from all of them. They had to dive the last meter or so, coming into a roll, but they managed to make it into safety just before the mass of material came down, sealing the entrance and blocking them off completely. Each of the four took a moment to recuperate, breathing heavily as the dust created by the falling rocks settled, and Blonde taking a moment to settle a suspicious eye on Jorge.

"Not that I'm not thankful for the help, but who in the hell are you?"


	6. Chapter 6: Jockey

Jorge sent a glance at Blonde, casually shuffling Etilka with one hand, using the motion to disguise his other hand going to the magnum at his hip. Quick glances, invisible through his polarized visor: four potential targets. Ones without helmets first, then…

He forced himself to relax, taking a breath in and out. These weren't enemies, and he'd just assisted them in combat. They had no reason to attack him- reason to be suspicious? Sure. But reasons for hostility? Definitely not. He would have to approach this carefully, but he'd prided himself as the most diplomatic and approachable of Noble. Now was the time to demonstrate those skills again.

The spartan released the handle of the weapon, though reluctantly, and raised his hand in a gesture of goodwill. "Aha, pochekay…" Paduk, who'd been watching with narrowed eyes from the back and fingering his snub-nosed pistol, brought his eyebrows together in surprise at those words. "I'm no threat to you."

"Oh, yeah?" Blonde stated, half-turning to Paduk, keeping the bulky supersoldier in his peripheral vision. "He one of 'yours', Paduk?"

The surprise had faded to thoughtfulness, but Paduk shook his head just a little. "Definitely not. Would think I'd remember something that big that isn't a Locust."

"Yeah, and he don't look like a Locust to me!" Jorge sent a look through his helmet at the boisterous larger man, who seemed to be intrigued more than anything, studying Jorge and his armour with clear interest.

Paduk grimaced, seeming to be resisting the urge to roll his eyes. "Yes, I can see that."

"Locust or not, can we get out of here anytime soon? I feel like a sitting duck." Helmet's expression was impossible to make out through the piece of equipment Jorge had named him for, but he got the sense that the soldier was impatient.

"Yeah, yeah- just gimme a damn second!" Blonde said in an exasperated tone, turning fully back to Jorge and, with very little subtlety, raising his rifle a little. "Kinda feel like you should be answering the questions anyway. I appreciate the help and all, but… eh, you understand. World gone to shit and all, can't be too careful about who you trust. So… who are you?"

Jorge spent a moment considering his answer before speaking. "A… traveler, I guess. Passing through and scavenging. Thought you could use the support, so I provided it."

Blonde raised an eyebrow. "Hell of a kit for a scavenger."

Jorge shrugged noncommittedly. "World's gone to shit, after all."

He laughed. "Well, I guess I can't argue with that reasoning…" he stuck out his hand. "Baird."

The spartan took the hand in his larger, armoured one. "Jorge."

"Nice to meet you, Jorge." He began pointing to the other three soldiers in the room. "The over-enthusiastic bastard's Cole, the sour white-haired one is Paduk, and the lone guy with a helmet is Clayton."

Jorge nodded to each of them in turn, flicking his gaze back to Paduk as the man let out an impatient huff.

"As much as I hate to admit it, I agree with Clayton- this is not a place we should stay for long. The Locust may have seen us slip in here, and they might come hunting for us. Disagree or not, but I don't want to be caught in this dead-end room if that happens."

Baird wavered on the point, seeming unsure. With the sidelong looks he kept giving him, Jorge could most likely guess what that uncertainty was about. Eventually, however, he sighed and gave in, hefting his rifle and turning and walking towards the car that blocked off the other half of the space. Halfway there, he stopped and turned back to Jorge, fixing him with a threatening gaze.

"You wanna help? That's fine. We could always use another gun. But stab us in the back, and I'll shoot you myself."

He nodded his helmeted head in acknowledgement, allowing himself to feel a flicker of satisfaction at a desirable outcome. After a moment, he shook it off, raising Etilka with both hands and following behind.

Unfortunately, he found their progress impeded by the wreck of a vehicle, which had come down with some rubble from the ceiling and blocked their progress. Baird considered the mess for a moment before speaking, glancing off to the side where Jorge noticed a hydraulic lift propping up the entire mess.

"Alright, should be a button or something that-"

Gently as the giant could, Jorge pushed Baird out of the way… then proceeded to kick the car hard enough to send it slamming against the wall, the rubble collapsing in its wake, leaving the way clear enough for them to make their way through. Baird blinked for a moment, then grinned and raised his rifle.

"That'll work."

Cole took care of the door, kicking it open, and all five of them stepped out of the building and into a dense fog.

* * *

"HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I HATE THIS DAMN CITY!?"

Jorge chuckled to himself at that, pausing behind an outcropping of brick just long enough for a locust to exhaust the magazine of its weapon, allowing him to sweep around the corner and shred it with a magnum round to its head. It turned out that the explosive magnum rounds worked just as well against the tough skin of the grubs as it did against the Covenant. Mighty convenient, Jorge thought.

As they'd fought their way across the city, the Gears seeming to have attracted every hostile element in the city, Jorge had managed to pick up quite a few things about this world and its people. Those that were left, in any case. For example, he had learned that the human soldiers he was accompanying were known as Gears, soldiers in the employ of the Coalition of Ordered Governments. Not much was left of said organization, but they still called themselves Gears, still wore the armour and still fought Locust, though these days it was more about survival than duty. Reach hadn't been that desperately bad when Jorge left, and if he had his say, it wouldn't ever reach that point.

Now, they were just a couple of blocks from Paduk's home base. Jorge found himself interested in what sort of people Paduk led, but he kept quiet for the sake of not straining the tentative trust that he'd built with the four over the past few hours of treking and fighting. Surreptitiously, he'd gathered a few caches of weapons and equipment in their wake and called down Ian in a Banshee to pick up and take out what he could, which Ian had gladly done. Apparently, with DOT attempting to infiltrate the main server and the engineer back on the Ardent Prayer running repairs and diagnostics, the ODST had had little to do but sit on his hands and was just glad for a useful task.

A bullet pinged off of his shield, causing him to snap out of his ruminations and shake his head as if to shake the thoughts out of them. Time for thinking later- now, he needed to concentrate on the fight at hand.

He observed from behind some cover as Baird made some quick gestures. Cole and Clayton darted off, each to a side into open buildings, while Paduk and Baird moved up the middle, firing, tossing grenades, yelling and generally making a lot of noise. Flanking maneuver, Jorge supposed. Well, if they wanted loud, he could do loud.

Stepping out from behind cover and placing Etilka's shielded barrel down on a waist high wall, which he noted that this city seemed to have quite a bit of for whatever reason, he took quick aim at the nest of Locust defenders down the way and let rip a long burst. The grubs ducked their heads behind their cover, some of them uttering cries of pain as the fifty caliber rounds of the weapon penetrated straight through whatever they were hiding behind, shortly followed by them.

Jorge glanced down at the ammunition box on the side of the weapon, grimacing, and reduced the length of the bursts. While he had done a relatively decent job of scrounging compatible ammunition, Etilka still burned through it at a rapid pace, nearly as fast as the weapons that the Gears carried. A grub poked its head above the barricade, then fell back as the spartan planted another magnum round in its eye socket, the thing's head exploding like an overripe watermelon all over the nearby grubs. This seemed to finally break their will as their line broke, grubs fleeing from the approaching Gears and spartan while blind-firing behind them, making for the safety of a line of turrets that had been set up in a second defensive line. Clever, and would have been quite effective in delaying the small force, buuut…

The Locust froze and stared in horror as they realized that the turrets that had been meant for their defense were not, in fact, manned by the gunners that had been left behind with them.

"'Sup." Said Cole. Clayton merely glowered, though it was just Jorge's best guess at his facial expression- again, the helmet got in the way.

Slowly, the grubs turned back, looking at them. Then they glanced at the turrets, then back. A rock and a hard place, Jorge thought with amusement, as all five of them opened fire on the shattered remnants of the grubs. The creatures went down like grain before a scythe, and he felt a mixture of satisfaction at the defeat of an enemy, combined with a strange nostalgia for the skill of Covenant Elites. This was far too easy in comparison.

Baird, grinning widely, threw a thumbs up to Cole and Clayton, who hopped down to street level, though not before disabling both turrets permanently.

"Alright, Paduk… your people are ahead, right?"

"Not much farther. Come on."

Baird seemed to chew on something for a moment before speaking again.

"Hey… are you and your people… Stranded?"

Paduk looked back, an eyebrow cocked and something between amusement and weariness in his expression. "Something like that."

Baird grimaced. Apparently, this wasn't the answer he'd wanted, but before he could speak further Cole interrupted.

"Hey, think we're here!"

Jorge looked ahead, noting the gate as well as a number of subtle slots for the barrels of weapons here and there in the wall surrounding it. Paduk strode up to the thing without hesitation, gripping the rail at the bottom of the metal gate and grunting as he lifted it over his head. The other three had no problem walking right on through, though Jorge had to duck his head as he passed under it. The moment he was through, Paduk stepped in and let it drop back to the ground with a muted crash, pausing to listen to it echo. Jorge watched as concern dawned in his expression as the man looked around, murmuring to himself.

"There should have been a guard here…"

The spartan turned and took in the area. Indeed, it seemed atypically abandoned for what was supposed to be what was essentially a small town. Glancing among the shacks and buildings, he noted the signs of recent habitation. Very recent. Food left out, spilled onto the ground. Huge crates of supplies left to sit. Things knocked over, generators sputtered into lifelessness with no fuel to sustain them. Cautiously, he lifted Etilka's barrel from where he'd allowed it to fall. This place made his instincts tingle almost as much as the run up to Visigrad.

The five of them spread out, almost instinctively falling into a defensive formation, weapons at the ready and pointing at everything that so much as moved. Paduk seemed bewildered, almost desperate in his attempts to find anything or anyone that might tell him what happened as he poked his way through the mess and almost kicked in the doors of shacks and buildings. Empty building after empty building, and Paduk was growing more and more concerned the more he saw. For all the evidence that people lived here, there were no bodies in the slightest, alive or dead. At least if he encountered a corpse, that would tell him SOMETHING, but there was nothing. Nothing but the wind whistling in-between vacant buildings, stirring the detritus that was present in every corner of this city into rustling waves that broke around their boots.

"Paduk… are you sure-?"

"Quiet!" Paduk's hand shot up, his head moving left and right, eyes scanning the thin murk that still covered everything. "I hear something…"

So did Jorge. His helmet's audio receptors picked up shuffling, something moving through the debris that definitely wasn't the wind. The disturbance created a tiny amount of noise that would have normally blended nigh perfectly with the sound of the garbage, but the difference was slight enough that the MJOLNIR suit's combat systems differentiated and amplified the sound. A brief blip of red appearing on his motion tracker only confirmed his suspicion.

"Recommend weapons at the ready," he said in a low voice. "Hostiles in the area."

The Gears and Paduk glanced back at him, then back out into the mist, on even higher alert than they had been a moment previously. The trip through the camp would have been nerve wracking for anyone, but Jorge found himself impressed by the Gears. Despite their casual approach to banter and interaction, they were now the picture of professionalism. He could appreciate that.

A slight creak echoed through the air. Not wood shifting or straining, not steel moving slightly in the breeze, but hinges that had been badly oiled. Given the nature of the environment, Jorge figured that that had been on purpose: he had no doubt that every one of these doors would utter an awful creaking noise whenever it moved. An effective alarm. The squad of five instantly had their weapons trained towards the source of the noise, eyes scanning for anything that might be a threat.

"What do you think?" muttered Clayton.

Baird shrugged. "Not much more we can do than move forward. Let's go."

Another thing that Jorge had noticed. Baird made command decisions, often selecting an option for the team to follow, and the others automatically turned to him when it came to making these sorts of calls. However, Baird had no marking of an officer about him or his armour… had he been demoted before the end of the Locust Wars, before the Hammer of Dawn strikes? Jorge tucked that little guess away for later consideration.

The door that had made the noise was a thick, heavy metal one set in the wall of one of the larger buildings. It was slightly opened, and for a moment Jorge considered that it might have been the wind causing it to creak, but the scuff marks in the garbage below it as well as the small pile that had been obviously recently disturbed served to prove that particular theory wrong. That, and…

Cole grimaced as he approached the doors and rubbed some of the glowing liquid left on the frame and ground off with his armoured fingers, rubbing the fluid between them before showing it to the other three. Clayton and Baird cursed, but Paduk's face simply fell for a moment before going back to its usual impassive self. Jorge would have missed the expression entirely, had he not happened to be looking at the soldier's face the moment the reaction appeared.

"Lambent." The word fell from Baird's lips like a curse itself, and Jorge found himself wondering what he meant. They'd run into a couple of creatures along the way that had glowed like this, and the Tickers had had small tanks of fluid that resembled this, but…

Jorge examined the door, the frame and the handle. None showed the distinctive scratching that he'd noted in places that lambent Wretches had been living. Really, however, that only served to make him more cautious. Clearly, they were dealing with something new here, something that none of the soldiers recognized. And that made Jorge wary.

Clayton stepped forward to pull the door open, Baird standing by with a rifle and scanning the interior. With Baird covering them, Cole and Paduk moved into the room as quietly as they could, which was an impressive amount for such heavy-set soldiers. Jorge followed behind them, Baird turning to cover the outside as Clayton stepped in before following him, then sealing the door behind them and turning to the rest of them and the interior of the building itself. The walls were a dark grey, almost black, the atmosphere dank and murky, their armour and flashlights being the only light in the place besides an ominous trail of fluid glowing a sickly yellow, leading deeper in.

Clayton made a displeased sound. "Why, oh why, did this place HAVE to be a haunted house?"

The others spared an amused glance at him before levelling their weapons and doing the only thing they could: follow the trail.


	7. Chapter 7: Evac

Broken glass crunched under Jorge's boots as the lights in his helmet swept the hall in front of him. A number of doorways, darker even than the hallway that lead to them, making the building something of a nightmare. Ambush could come from anywhere at any time.

The Gears seemed to agree with his unspoken thoughts: two to a side, they methodically checked room after room, one covering from the doorway while the other went in and poked around the rooms themselves. There was no sound but the shuffling of detritus by their boots, their breathing, and the muted clinks and clanks of their weaponry and equipment. The very same vibes that had Jorge cautious, walking through the settlements and hearing about strange monsters lurking in the crops from scared civvies.

It felt like years since that ride in with the rest of Noble, investigating a simple downed comms relay.

Something shuffled through the darkness up ahead, breaking Jorge from his thoughts. The gun, a Retro Lancer, the Gears had called it, was against his shoulder in an instant. He'd felt that the shorter, easier-to-handle assault rifle would be better for these cramped CQC conditions when he'd picked it up a number of rooms back, not to mention the more powerful ammunition and the broad-bladed, savage-looking bayonet had both highly appealed to him.

A short whistle, and all four guns were trained forward, sweeping the darkness. Jorge indicated 'forward' and 'follow' with two fingers, and four separate radio clicks acknowledged him. His helmet lantern flicked off and his night vision came up, giving him slightly better visibility in these darkened conditions as the systems in his suit turned up the UV lamps and compensated as best they could for the darkness. After a moment, he moved forward into the dark, near-silent despite his armour and weapons.

A line of trash a little further down the darkened hall had been disturbed. As Jorge crouched slightly, getting a better look, he noted that the steps had been light and stumbling- the path itself wasn't a straight line from one doorway to another, but a slightly meandering trail. Part of him wanted to believe that this was some miracle survivor, but the rest of him was wearily reminded of the uncountable times where such a situation had turned out almost immediately to be a trap, first with the Insurgents, and then with the Covvies. So, when he pushed himself to his armoured feet and followed the trail, he was even more alert than he had been before.

Thus, when he stepped through the door and sighted a hunched human figure crouched in a corner, he neither approached it nor let his guard down.

"Hello? Are you-" Jorge didn't get any farther than that. The figure snapped around, and Jorge caught a glimpse of yellow luminescent eyes and mouth before it leaped at him like an animal.

Most would have panicked, having something akin to a zombie leaping at them from the darkness. Jorge, by merit of being one of the most expensive supersoldiers in human history, was nowhere near most people. Therefore, his entire response to the shrieking creature was a slight narrowing of his eyes behind the opaque polarized visor, and a twitch of his trigger finger.

He blinked with slight surprise as, a moment later, he was showered with fine grey and yellow ash. He frowned as he reviewed his recollection of the last few seconds, confirming it with a quick replay of the record from his helmet's cameras.

The creature had leaped at him. In midair, he'd squeezed the trigger of the retro lancer, which had thrown a five-round burst into the face of said creature, completely obliterating its head from its shoulders. There was the briefest moment of response, the body reeling backward in response to the kinetic energy that had destroyed the head and then, quite suddenly, it had simply… dissolved. Jorge heard the sound of fingers tightening around metal, and glanced behind him to find Baird staring at the ash.

"What in hell was-"

That was as far as he got. Another scream rang out from farther into the building, and it was followed in turn by a number of answering screams. Jorge's motion detector lit up with red, his auditory sensors suddenly full of rapid shuffling and scrabbling, clearly from an entire hoard of these things. Typically, Jorge would have gratefully and gladly left the reigns of leadership in the capable hands of one Damon Baird, but in this specific case…

"In here! Quickly!" Jorge shouted behind him at the others, before quickly moving to the back wall. A desk was there, and he paused a moment to clip the lancer to the magnetic locks on the back of his armour before bodily grabbing the thing and lifting it off the floor, carrying it back to the front of the room. The moment that the last of the Gears was through the door, he dropped the desk, blocking the lower half of the entrance. That would slow anything getting into the room, as well as limit the amount of open entrance, allowing them to concentrate their collective fire against an easy target.

He didn't even manage to get to the back of the room before the Gears opened fire. Jorge spun on his axis, ripping the retro lancer off the magnetics, pointing it and pulling the trigger completely on instinct. A tide of the glowing humans evaporated under concentrated fire from all five of them, ash spreading itself across the surface of the makeshift barricade as a small horde of the monsters tried to force their way into the room.

"Shit! They're lambent, fucking lambent humans!" Baird yelled from one side. A single lambent made it over the desk, fell to the floor, only to be met with a burst from Baird's weapon. "It jumped the damn species barrier!"

"Talk later, shoot _now!_ " Paduk replied, slamming a fresh magazine into his rifle and working the bolt.

As it was, the situation was hectic, though not dire. The desk, the limited open space and the single entrance bottlenecked the flow of lambent humans- Jorge could hear them scratching at the doorframe and the walls, trying to push their way in. Only one or two could fit through at a time, and each of them had to vault or crawl over the makeshift barricade, meaning that occasionally three or more would occasionally stick themselves in the opening, giving Jorge and the Gears a good chance for a quick breather before killing them.

Jorge shuddered slightly to think what this would have been like out in the hall, lambent coming from all sides, nothing to slow them down or hide behind. Sure, he'd make it out just fine- he was a SPARTAN- but the Gears might not be so lucky. The lambent might be weak, but so were grunts, and grunts could be a very real threat given enough numbers or the right weapons. Even the best and the brightest, armed with the best weapons and protected by the best MJOLNIR had to offer, could be overwhelmed.

In another time and place, this was _exactly_ what finally brought down Noble Six, though Jorge knew nothing of the appropriateness of his statement.

With massed fire and an easily defensible position, it became something of a war of attrition: namely, whether or not the Gear's ammo would hold out longer than the lambent's numbers. Paduk had started using his large, snub-nosed pistol, while Baird had switched to a curved lever-action shotgun that released a cloud of shrapnel with every shot, shredding yet more of the lambent to naught more than ash.

Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the tide of lambent slowed… then stopped. One last particularly sickly looking one awkwardly shoved itself half over the desk, only to be ended by one final shotgun blast. Jorge waited a moment, two… he let thirty seconds pass before he cautiously made his way to the ruined doorway. Jorge leaned out over the desk, pointing the barrel of his rifle into the hallway.

Just on the other side of the desk was was a lambent, only one arm left, lower half missing, and half of its other arm shredded. Jorge took a moment, assured himself that there was no ambush, then vaulted the desk, armoured boot crushing the thing's skull with a satisfying **crunch** and reducing the thing to ash.

He waited a moment more, there, standing in a pile of ashes that was all that was left of the lambent horde, pointing his rifle first one way, then the other, waiting for a sudden surge of enemies. When none was forthcoming, he turned his head back towards the Gears, waiting in the room.

"All clear!"

There was an audible four-part sigh of relief, as the rest of the Gears lowered their weapons and tromped to the front of the little room, one by one following Jorge's lead over the desk. Jorge noted that the desk itself had apparently splintered quite a bit when he'd leaped over it, even the fraction of his weight that he'd exerted on the piece of furniture through his hand being more than the poor old thing could handle. Internally, he admonished himself: he needed to avoid drawing the suspicion of his companions, and providing evidence that he was carrying enough weight to crush most humans would most definitely draw said unwanted attention.

Thankfully, the Gears seemed more preoccupied with their dusted enemies. Clayton was shifting the ashes with the barrel of his gun, muttering to himself, low enough that only Jorge could hear him, mainly thanks to the auditory sensors built into his helmet.

"Fucking lambent fucking humans, goddamn thing jumped the rails… how the hell…"

A quick glance, hidden by Jorge's opaque visor, revealed that the rest of the squad wasn't doing much better. Paduk hung at the edge of the group, fidgeting slightly, veiled concern hinted in his scarred appearance, Cole adjusting his grip on his weapon, eyes sweeping the building. Baird had gone down on one knee, rubbing a pinch of the yellow-grey ash between his fingertips. A moment of deliberation, then the SPARTAN turned bodily towards Baird.

"Not something you've seen before, then?"

Baird frowned, wiping his fingers on his armour and standing. "Yeah, I think I'd know if I'd seen a damn glowey human. Didn't even know it was possible for a human to go lambent." Baird paused, shock flickering across his face, glancing in Paduk's direction. "Ah, crap… look, Paduk, maybe some of them made it out…"

Paduk cut him off with a gesture. "We'll move farther in. If they are here, or if they left a clue, we'll find it. If not…" He shook his head. "Let's get moving."

Baird took point, as ever, leading the group down the hall. Cole and Clayton followed behind, Paduk and Jorge bringing up the rear. A quick adjustment made sure that the soundproof helmet of Jorge's MJOLNIR suit was well and truly sealed; he didn't want to tip his hand just yet, and he needed information.

"Baird!" Jorge waited a moment, but the Gear hadn't heard him, and continued down the hall without any reaction. Jorge nodded to himself, satisfied. "DOT, sitrep." 

"All systems nominal, Noble Five. ODST Arroyo following from high altitude with a type 52 Phantom, prepared to render assistance if need be. Repairs to ship systems continuing." DOT's emotionless, synthetic voice came through his comms.

"I've had ta drop a few loads back at the Ardent Prayer, but everything's green across the board- I'm ready to lay down some sweet, heavy plasma fire if you need it, sir."

Jorge suppressed the desire to nod. Pointless over auditory comms, not to mention the whole 'tipping his hand' thing. "Thermals and scans show any remaining hostiles?" 

"Hold on, sir, running the scan…"

DOT spoke up instead of the Corporal this time. "Sensor data indicates concentration of enemies in the area is high." Jorge's HUD flickered, pinpointing the locations of things tagged as 'hostile', detected with a combination of the Ardent Prayer's broad-spectrum sensors from orbit and the narrowly focused sensors of the Phantom. "Hostiles divided into two distinct groups: Locust, with lower body temperatures, and Unknown. Unknown targets have internal temperatures in excess of 66 Celsius, far higher than normal human operating temperature. Positing these targets designate 'lambent human', consistent with results observed from sensor data pertaining to lambent wretches encountered prior."

Jorge made a humming noise. "Any idea what caused this?"

"Apologies, Noble Five. Insufficient data to posit theory. Require samples to be gathered and returned to Ardent Prayer medical bay for analysis."

Jorge grunted. "Corporal. Up for a field trip?"

Ian groaned through the comms. "I'm on it, sir." Jorge smiled slightly in amusement.

"Kiváló. Jó fiú." With that done, Jorge addressed DOT again. "Sensor data indicate any survivors?" 

"Processing… negative for survivors in close proximity. Expanding range… possible match, ninety six percent consistent with baseline human physiology. Large group inhabiting mansion near the edge of the city, with heavy fortifications. Heat sources indicate a large number of normal humans, in addition to generators and vehicles, including aircraft."

Jorge tightened his grip on his weapon, the metal creaking slightly in protest, as Baird reached the doors on the far end of the hall and checked for hostiles through the window. Relieved as he was that Paduk's people seemed to be mostly alive and well, he now had an entirely different issue: whether to tell the rest of the group about them or not. On one hand, it would prevent them from investigating the large washed-up rig that formed the center of the base, which, according to sensor data he was being fed, was crawling with lambent humans and Locust. On the other hand, it would mean that he would have to provide an explanation for his knowledge, which would mean revealing that he wasn't from this planet, outing himself entirely.

Jorge was used to making snap decisions. He was, after all, a SPARTAN II, the best the UNSC had to offer. While he'd spent much time with Noble and had enjoyed it, he had been in command positions before, though nothing like this. It occurred to him that, lacking an officer of higher rank than himself, he was technically the captain of the Ardent Prayer. He'd never thought he'd one day be the officer in charge of a ship, but, well, here he was.

And now, he had to make a decision regarding operational safety. Yes, there were many advantages to revealing the ship in orbit and his own extra-planetary origins, including trade with the locals and a steady source of supplies, weapons and ammo… but there were also the downsides, the caveats: these Gears were fighting a desperate resistance against what remained of the Locust, as well as the Lambent. Did Jorge really want to commit himself fully to a campaign that he only joined, albeit in a very limited fashion, because he needed information?

Baird and Cole prepared to kick the doors open, and Jorge made his decision. To hell with operational security. He'd gone down defending Reach, defending humanity, and he'd be damned if he let this second chance to help save human lives, even if they weren't UNSC. With the resources and tech of the Ardent Prayer, maybe he could even help them get a civilization back on track.

He held up a hand. "Wait."

Cole and Baird paused, glancing back at him. Behind Jorge, he could hear Paduk turn towards him, while Clayton turned his helmeted head in Jorge's direction. He made sure he had their attention, then began pointing with his fingers.

"Large amount of hostile in the area, Locust and more lambent humans. Many of them. It will be a firefight the moment we step through these doors and alert them." He pointed in the direction of the derrick. "No survivors in the structure, only lambent and Locust… but there is a large encampment in the… Seahorse Hills area?" He flicked his eyes back to the small text in his HUD to check, confirming. "Recommend we wait here, while I call for evac."

Cole turned back towards the doors, leaning over to the window. "Yeah, there's glowies and grubs- motherfuckers are hidin', didn't see them 'till you mentioned it…" Cole nodded. "'Preciate it."

Baird, on the other hand, looked highly suspicious. "And how do you know these things, exactly? Hardly think your fairy godmother is whispering inside that helmet of yours."

Jorge adjusted his weapon in his hands, considering how to say what he wanted to say.

"Orbital sensor readings combined with those from a craft currently hovering in a bank of clouds a few hundred meters above our heads."

Baird's suspicion deepened, eyes narrowing slightly. "Now, I know that there's not enough of the Cog's orbital up there to provide a clear anything, if you could communicate it and if you could even access its functions. So, how exactly do you have enough resolution to tell exactly where and what people and grubs are?"

"Ah, hogyan magyarázom meg... I have a craft in orbit, as well. I am not... from around here. Ended up here by complete accident, thought that this was a lost UNSC colony... though I am less and less sure of that the more information we gather."

"And when, exactly were you going to tell us that?" Clayton said.

Jorge spared him a glance, turning his head to make it clear. "When it became relevant. Which it did."

"You mentioned a large encampment…" Paduk stepped closer, cautious hope veiled behind suspicion. Jorge turned his visor in his direction, nodding.

"Large. Couple hundred people, and definitely people, not lambent. Healthy, safe, alive." Paduk let out a sigh of relief.

"Okay, sure, let's say I believe you. You mentioned evac?" Baird asked. Jorge nodded again.

"I can call in the craft to pull us out. It will easily carry all of us."

"The hell are you waiting for then? A written invitation from the grubs!?"

Jorge chuckled, activating his comms, though leaving his external speakers on this time. "Corporal Arroyo, change of plans. RV at current coordinates for evac. Confirm." 

"Hard copy, sir. ETA three minutes. Stand by."

Jorge glanced at Paduk. "Any way to get onto the roof?"

Paduk indicated back where they'd come from with his chin. "Ladder behind a concealed door."

Jorge nodded. "Much obliged." He spoke into the radio again; "LZ will be indicated by green smoke."

"Affirmative, Noble Five. Will VTOL in two minutes."

They left the doors behind, following Paduk's lead down the hall and into one of the rooms. Paduk stepped to the back wall and hit a small catch, swinging open a door in the wall, revealing a small maintenance room and a ladder, leading up to a sealed door to the roof. Paduk went first, slamming the door back on its hinges and climbing up onto the roof. The other Gears stepped behind Jorge, obviously looking to be behind him, but Jorge gave the flimsy, rusted ladder one look and waved them in first.

"My armour weighs half a ton. I suspect that the ladder won't hold me for very long."

Baird cocked his head slightly. "How do you even carry all that weight?"

Jorge grinned beneath his helmet. "Classified." That got a groan of frustration Jorge well recognized from UNSC Marines back home.

Muttering invectives under his breath about militaries and information, Baird followed Paduk up the ladder. Cole went right after, though Clayton paused before following as well, turning back towards Jorge.

"If you're planning to stab us in the back, or if this is a trap of some kind…"

Jorge waved a hand in a placating manner. "I am aware: you will shoot me yourself."

"Damn right I will." With that parting shot, Clayton hauled himself up the ladder.

Jorge took a moment to pull the concealed door closed behind him, better to delay the lambent and Locust that might be alerted to what they were doing and might choose to try to follow after, then tried his weight on the first rung. The steel screeched horribly and the metal bent somewhat, but it seemed to hold, so Jorge put his boot on the next rung and pulled himself quickly up and to the roof. Hold it might, but that didn't mean that he should take any risks.

By the time he got to the roof, the Gears were already spaced out on the rough roofing, monopolizing cover and ensuring that they had a defensive firing line in all directions. Thankfully, the building seemed to have adequately contained the noises of their brief, hair-raising firefight, as the indicators on Jorge's HUD pertaining to the enemies in the area were making no move of any sort towards their position.

Of course, Jorge thought to himself as he popped green smoke on the rooftop, they'd have to be braindead not to notice this and get a little curious. Of course, the lambent might very well _be_ braindead, given that they seemed to generally not make many more sounds than hissing and shrieking, but Jorge wasn't exactly a medical professional. Most of the medical procedures that Jorge carried out were closer to trepanning, and were typically done with the help of a high-caliber rifle.

Unfortunately, Jorge had been right about the curiosity thing.

"GROUNDWALKERS!"

"Shit." Baird muttered under his breath, pulling those strange frag grenades once again. This time, he pressed a couple of recessed buttons, then ran forward and planted the thing in the roof, before changing course and whipping out another. The first beeped, but didn't explode.

Frag grenades that turned into… proximity mines, Jorge guessed. Brutal and handy. He approved.

Baird just managed to vault back over the piece of ductwork he was using as cover before grappling hooks came over the edge of the roof and lodged themselves in the tarmac. Locust snipers climbed nearby buildings, taking potshots and trying to keep Jorge and the Gear's heads down, so that other Locust could climb the ropes attached to the grappling hooks.

Jorge wasn't having it. He slipped the retro lancer onto his back, the inaccurate but powerful weapon sadly inappropriate for this particular use, then went for the magnum clipped to his belt. As the ammunition indicator on his weapon switched from a blank NO CONNECTION to reading the ammunition of the pistol, he noted that it had only a half a magazine left: checking his belt revealed only one other magazine. He'd have to make his shots count.

Thankfully, his modified MJOLNIR suit was more than up for the task. Zooming in and calculating trajectories, his helmet's HUD allowed him to line up a shot in a matter of seconds, every bullet met with the satisfying explosion of red as the large explosive rounds found their homes in Locust eye sockets. The Gears had their hands full sinking rounds into the grappling hooks, forcing them to lose their grip on the roof and send the climbing Locust to the ground, but Jorge thought they were doing rather well.

He was halfway through his spare magazine when a hail of bright purple plasma projectiles slammed into the Locust, exploding violently as contact with objects caused the unstable balls of plasma to lose containment and release all their energy at once. Glancing up, Jorge watched as the Phantom swung its way to the black roof, coming to a rest with one side's troop doors opening wide.

Jorge popped one more sniper, then made a run for the open troop transport, flipping to his retro lancer and laying down a spray of covering fire for the Gears, who, after a moment, followed behind.

"LZ's a bit hotter than I'd like it to be, sir!" Corporal Arroyo yelled back from the pilot's seat, just as Jorge stepped into the empty area behind the cockpit.

"The Locust don't seem to be happy that we're leaving the party early." Arroyo chuckled at that.

Then, as the rest of the Gears came skidding into the vehicle, the armoured side panels hinged closed, sealing the space from incoming fire as the craft lifted from the roof and moved off, smoothly sliding away from the fight and into the open air. Suddenly, the craft jerked to the right, Arroyo cursing from the cockpit.

"What's wrong!?" Jorge yelled up, voice amplified by the speakers in his helmet.

"Some big flying monstrosity on our tail! I can't outrun it; these things weren't made for speed! Should be thankful I can fly it at all!" Another lurch, this time to the other side. "It's too fast for me to draw a bead with the heavy plasma, and it keeps lobbing rockets at us!"

"Open the side turrets!"

The armoured walls ground open again, though this time it was only the platforms the turrets lay on. Jorge stepped through the opening, mindful of the drop, making a sound of annoyance as a few stray rounds from their pursuers sparked against the armoured hull of the Phantom. Glancing back as his fingers tightened around the grips of the turret, swinging towards the back, Jorge noted Baird moving to take the other turret before Jorge focused on their pursuers.

There were three large, tentacled creatures. With the zoom in his helmet, Jorge could make out two Locust riding each one, one the driver or pilot and the other holding a rifle, firing forwards at them. Occasionally, part of the creature's harness would light up red, and a rocket would come streaking towards them, prompting Ian to jerk the Phantom to the side to avoid it.

Thankfully, the rockets appeared to be just that: crudely manufactured rockets with no guidance system, just an explosive warhead stuck on the end of an engine. Given the looks of equipment Jorge had seen thus far, he doubted that the rockets even had the AP qualities that would allow them to penetrate the Phantom's armour. Still, he reflected as he wrapped his hands around the triggers of the plasma turret, Ian had the right idea in dodging them. No telling what the Locust put in their rockets.

Plasma arced from his turret, blue bolts speeding through the empty air and impacted against the chasing creatures, hot blue plasma splashing across the skin, metal and leather gear. The creature shrieked in pain, one of the Locust riders dying instantly, and the other vaporized as a stray plasma bolt struck the rocket magazine, causing the warheads to detonate from the heat. The creature itself spiraled down to the ground, trailing smoke from propellant set alight by the bolt and the ensuing explosion.

"Hot damn! I love this thing!" Baird's shout was audible even above the wind and plasma fire.

The other creatures and Locust, now wary of an unknown craft with weapons they didn't understand, withdrew to the edge of their weapon's effective range, reducing themselves to taking inaccurate potshots. They'd stopped firing rockets entirely, the unguided things far more likely to miss than get even the most grazing of hits against the armoured skin of the Phantom.

Jorge shifted on his feet as he felt the craft angle itself upward, the engine throttling up as Ian aimed it for space. He checked the condition of the pursuit one last time, then stepped back into the interior of the Phantom as the turret retracted flat against the armoured door panel, the entire thing swinging up the moment he was off it and settling into place. He took a moment to listen to the slight hiss of the seals, barely picked up by his helmet's systems, then turned to the Gears.

"And there wasn't any recoil! I'm thinking magnetically contained plasma, though I'm not sure-" Baird was excitedly talking to Paduk and Cole, hands nearly a blur as they made lightning-quick gestures, words flowing from his mouth in a rapid pace. It reminded Jorge a little of Kat in those relaxed moments when Noble was off-duty, and she'd found something interesting or new, or just needed to vent the intellectual pressure. A pang of emotion flickered, and he brushed it aside automatically, turning his attention to the others.

Cole was nodding and saying 'yeah' and 'alright' at all the right moments, but given how his fingers played over his equipment and how his eyes were glazed over, Jorge suspected that he'd long grown used to Baird's quirks, and was now simply resigned to riding them out. Paduk, on the other hand, was alert. In a moment, Jorge read him, training and experience making judgements in a moment.

He was alert, yes, but that wasn't all. He stood with his back to the armoured hatch, and whenever he shifted, neither Jorge nor the cockpit of the Phantom were out of his field of vision. His pistol was holstered, and his rifle had been stuck to the magnetic locks on the back of his armour, but the holster was loose around the sidearm, a buckle obviously designed to hold the weapon where it was hanging casually loose. Paduk glanced at Jorge, a quick flick of the eyes that might easily be missed by anyone who was not a SPARTAN, and Jorge knew that he was watching constantly.

Jorge had never considered himself the smart one, as it were, but the truth was that compared to the SPARTAN II's, most of the human race was a little stupid. This came out in a number of ways, the intentional being their prodigious combat performance and capability, their mastery of tactics, a high aptitude for math, always a necessity for moving in space and firing ballistic weaponry, and their ability to read situations and people so well as almost to appear precognitive. It also meant that they were more than a little odd, to a man. John 117, the accepted leader of the SPARTAN II's and a man Jorge had nothing but respect and admiration for, showed it in his nearly obsessive-compulsive desire for his people to be razor sharp, and the fact that John had something of a hero complex.

Thus, when he saw all the little bits of how Paduk acted, Jorge's mind assembled the puzzle. Paduk was a survivor, Jorge surmised, had been for perhaps his entire life. Scar tissue on the neck and face- burns, instead of anything else. Combat wounds, most likely, so an old soldier. His hair was gray, and Jorge would guess that he was perhaps forty or fifty. He was more than just someone who had looted a weapon and survived in a combat zone, Jorge could see that in the way that he held himself. Paduk was most definitely a veteran, not just one of those Stranded the Gears had mentioned. Disciplined, ready, vigilant. This was a man that Jorge could respect, a man Jorge could fight besides.

When Paduk sensed the attention and glanced his way, Jorge gave him a respectful nod, and was pleased when he received one in kind.

Then, there was the last member of the group of four, Clayton. The man had not removed his helmet even now, and a mere glance told Jorge why: a few marks on the front and sides, scars in the metal from bullets that had failed to penetrate the armour and had ricochet. Like Paduk, his back was to a wall, though in Clayton's case this was the back of the Phantom itself, from which he could clearly see both sides and the front. The bow in his hands seemed an impractical battlefield weapon at first glance, but a second revealed the razor sharp arms coated in faded bloodstains, and the coils in the barrel. 'GRUB KILLER' was emblazoned proudly on the front of his chestplate, crimson, a large and intentional stand-out mark.

Clayton's helmeted head twitched, ever so slightly, in Jorge's direction. Jorge, in return, simply nodded again. Internally, he felt surprised and slightly impressed that the Gear had noticed his attention, the thought rolling around in the back of his head that Paduk and Clayton were something of birds of a feather, even down to their sour attitudes and impenetrable countenances. Back on Reach, Jorge would have assumed that the two of them were members of one of the three SPARTAN generations.

Clayton, for his part, didn't seem perturbed by the attention, instead angling himself more in the SPARTAN's general direction. Given the soldier's body language, Jorge assumed that this action was somewhat of a challenge to him, something like a physical representation of someone saying 'anything you like', or perhaps 'go ahead. Take a good, long look.' Confidence, self-assuredness, and perhaps something of a rebellious streak.

Jorge allowed his visor to linger in Clayton's direction for a few moments more, scrutinizing him again and taking his time, sending the clear signal that he wasn't worried or rushed. After what his intimidation and interrogation training said was an appropriate amount of time, he turned his helmet back towards the fore of the Phantom and pressed a hand to the side of his helmet.

"Sitrep?" He stated simply.

It didn't take long for Ian to reply. "We're moving at a good clip, sir- no damage to our ride, s'far as I can tell. Entering stable low orbit in seventeen minutes." He hesitated. "Sir… are we taking our, uh… guests, back to base?"

Jorge quietly suppressed the desire to glance at the Gears. "Hogyan kell..." He tapped the side of his visor absent-mindedly.

He'd like to just take the Gears to the Prayer and get this over with, if only to have full access to the resources and weapons at his disposal, and he had no doubt that they might have started suspecting something was up when a ship created with technology they'd never seen before had swooped down out of the sky to save their collective bacon. However, there was operational security to consider. Certainly, Jorge was rather fixed on assisting these soldiers with their mission, partially out of need for weapons, equipment and resources, partially out of something of a… shared desire, as it were. He knew what it was like to be up against impossible, insurmountable odds, with barely enough equipment to get the job done. Pokol, he'd gotten here in the first place by helping stick a makeshift slipspace bomb onto a stolen corvette and then setting it off manually because it was so full of plasma damage and shrapnel that the timer had fried. He'd be damned if he left them to fend for themselves.

"So…" Jorge half-turned, realizing that Baird seemed to have finished with gushing over the plasma turrets, and had stepped up to the SPARTAN. The other Gears had moved, almost subconsciously, to back Baird. Further support for the idea that baird had been the commanding officer of the bunch. "I think this is the part of the ride where we get to ask questions."

Jorge weighed his response for a long moment. "You are currently aboard a Type 52 Phantom, a troop carrier and gunship."

"So, UFO. Do you have a secret city in the hollow Sera?" Baird said, an eyebrow raised in incredulousness. Jorge waved an armoured hand.

"Ah, no, nothing of the sort- we're more… out of towners?" Inaccurate? Yes, definitely. A lie? Not as such. Jorge was going to play it safe for now, try to bring out the big guns only when they really needed them. "We, that is myself, Corporal Arroyo- the pilot- and… another person, thought that this was a planet aligned with our allies. We were looting the military base when you happened to roll into town. I followed behind you for a time, observing, but I ended up giving you a hand anyway."

Cole nodded. "Believe me, baby, we 'preciate it."

"Yeah, sure, I'm ecstatic about the idea of being followed without my knowledge…" Clayton muttered.

Jorge chuckled. "Ah, well, if you didn't want my help, you could have just said so. Though I think we all appreciated getting out of there in one piece."

"Still." Baird looked skeptical. Not that Jorge could blame him: the existence of beings outside of his own planet had most likely been not much more than a though experiment to him earlier today. "A craft in orbit? You mentioned that you're not from here, and something about… UNSB?"

"UNSC." Jorge corrected reflexively. "United nations space command, the primary military force of Earth and her colonies. Of course, this" he gestured to the inside of the Phantom, "is most definitely not UNSC in make or origin. You could say that we're borrowing it, but that might imply that we intend to give it back."

"Hah!" Cole laughed aloud, slapping Jorge's shoulder in good humour. "Yeah, we understand THAT! Borrowing stuff from the grubs is my favorite pastime!"

"So, uh, the 'craft?'" Baird said, waving Cole away a little, trying to get the conversation back on track.

" _Ah_ … something else we borrowed. Heavy corvette, about… nine hundred meters in length."

The eyebrows of each of the Gears shot up to their hairlines, impressive as the three that Jorge could see either had a hairline that was pretty far back or didn't have hair at all.

"Nine… that's almost a klick long- and you said that you were 'borrowing' it!?"

Jorge shifted. "Well, directly and violently appropriated, would be more accurate. And it was from the Covenant, who deserve more grief than me stealing a single corvette."

Baird looked… concerned. "If that's how big the _other_ guy's ships are… how big's a UNSC ship?"

"Ah, well…" Jorge glanced away, recalling the numbers. "Generally… destroyers are about five hundred meters, with cruisers being over a klick long-" He was cut off by a loud clatter as Baird sat down heavily in the middle of the troop bay, looking quite shellshocked.

Jorge took that as his cue to move to the cockpit and help the Corporal guide the Phantom into dock with the Ardent Prayer.


End file.
